Taipa, Cotai and Coloane

Macau’s two islands, Taipa and Coloane, were originally dots of land supporting a few small fishing villages; now, joined by the rapidly developing strip of reclaimed land, Cotai, they look set to become part of a new entertainment district. Despite this, both retain quiet pockets of colonial architecture where you can just about imagine yourself in some European village, while Coloane also has a fine beach.

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Taipa

Taipa, site of Macau International Airport, racecourse, sports stadium, university and residential “suburbs”, at first seems too developed to warrant a special stop. However, tiny Taipa Village on the island’s east side, with its old colonial promenade, makes a pleasant place for an extended lunch. The bus drops you off by a modern market, where the 100m-long Rua da Cunha (or “Food Street”) leads down to the old covered Feira do Carmo market square, which is partly surrounded by a dragon wall and several restaurants. On the far side of the square, turn right to more restaurants and a Tin Hau Temple, or left until you see a wavy set of tree-lined steps leading up to a small square and church above the old colonial promenade, Avenida da Praia. Five original, peppermint-green mansions with verandas here now form the Taipa House Museum, which reveals details of early nineteenth-century domestic life for the resident Macanese families: high-ranking civil servants who were religious and well-to-do, but not enormously wealthy.

Cotai

A few years ago, views south from the museum took in mud flats, reeds and the sea; now this has all been filled in to form Cotai district, and the scene is as incongruous as you could imagine. Right ahead is the extraordinary Venetian, a full-scale reproduction of Venice’s St Mark’s Square housing the world’s largest casino resort, with 850 gaming tables, 4100 slot machines and its own permanent Cirque de Soleil troupe. This is only the first of several similar projects, with Macau Studio City – combining a further resort and casino complex with film-production facilities – also set to open in the near future. Further reclamation means that Cotai’s western side now bumps up against the Chinese mainland, with the Cotai Frontier Post (not yet open to pedestrians) making access easy for coachloads of holidaying mainlanders.

Coloane

Coloane comprises nine square kilometres of hilly parkland, more colonial fragments and some decent beaches, making it a pleasant place to spend a few hours. After crossing Cotai, buses pass the Parque de Seac Pai Van, a large park with paths leading uphill to a white marble statue of the goddess A-Ma – at 19.99m high, it is the tallest in the world. A short way on, all buses stop at the roundabout in pretty Coloane Village on the western shore, overlooking mainland China just across the water and home to a fair number of expats; here, Lord Stow’s Bakery, at the sea end of the square, offers irresistible natas, Portuguese egg tarts. To the north of the village are a few junk-building sheds, while the street leading south from the village roundabout, one block back from the shore, contains a couple of shops selling dried marine products and the unexpected yellow and white St Francis Xavier Chapel, where a relic of the saint’s arm bone is venerated. A couple of hundred metres beyond this is the Tam Kung Temple, housing a metre-long whale bone carved into the shape of a ship.